Category: Events

IRENA FRANTAL
DE-/+CONSTRUCTION
Karas Gallery
September 18 – September 30, 2018

On Tuesday, September 18, 2018, from 11:00 to 19:00 at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58) you can attend the process of putting up the exhibition by Irena Frantal, called De -/+ construction.

De -/+ construction is an exhibition by Irena Frantal who deals with the boundaries/or lack of them in media (in her case, the media of the book). The artist will build an exhibition at the Karas Gallery on September 18 from 11 am to 7 pm and from the moment she enters the empty gallery, the exhibition exists. Formal opening – sharp boundaries of the media: exhibition – do not exist.

The last day of the exhibition, September 30, the artist will intervene in her work by moving parts and extinguishing/cleaning up the physical part of the work. You are invited to participate in the process from 10 am to 1 pm.

“Dieter Roth did his own Copley Book in collaboration with Richard Hamilton, giving him instructions in the letters he sent from Iceland to London. When the print shop lost one of his drawings, Roth included in the book a letter of apology from the print shop and a description of the drawing. Copley Books are unbound papers of various dimensions in one box. They tell about the process of making books – these books. As a spiral, at the same time constantly spreading, but also confined to itself.

De-/+construction is a work, developed in situ. It’s a book that intertwines its space with the gallery space. Layers of elements (pages; paper residues, created by cutting page edges; folds, created by page browsing; hidden parts; photographs; drawing; text; letters, left out of text cutting; text sketches; bindings; binding materials and covers; tools; text silhouettes; erased text; letter templates…) create an installation that is fluent, soft and changeable. By constantly reading it and by page browsing, it is changing. The observer/ reader’s touch is needed to keep the book alive, and so the viewer – observer/reader is invited to read/browse through pages and parts of this book/exhibition. Some of the questions I ask myself in this work are: Where is the limit/end of the work/book? At what moment does the text begin? Is one part/fragment at the same time a whole?

And finally, is (any) book also an exhibition?”

Irena Frantal

Irena Frantal is a visual artist from Zagreb. She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and specialized in the art of the book (MA Book Art) at the University of the Arts in London. In her art practice she explores the media of the book. She collaborates with artists of various profiles on projects that use the book medium. She is the author of a series of Book Art Session workshops.

Contact: irenafrantal@yahoo.co.uk

Supported by:

The Karas Gallery program is also realized with the financial support of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU).

Working hours:

Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 3pm | Thursday: 3pm to 7pm | Saturday and Sunday: 9am to 12am
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.

The exhibition will remain open until September 30, 2018

Helena Klakočar
MOHA IN TRITON
September 12 – 23, 2018
PM Gallery

MOHA IN TRITON solo exhibition of Helena Klakočar opens on Wednesday, September 12, 2018 at 8pm at the PM Gallery of the Home of the Croatian Association of Artists.

Helena Klakočar’s graphic novels are primarily based on honesty, warmth, intellectual wisdom and social engagement for a better and fairer world. At the same time, she is unobtrusive: she does not boast with images or words. Her works are intellectual and lyrical and engagement is woven into a poetic and humane reflection of the world, on the brink between a contemporary fairy tale and harsh existential reality.

Her latest project, MEDITERRANEAN WALL, is characterized by a simple and unpretentious empathy, poetry and humanity that cut right to the heart of the matter.

If there is anyone who should speak on behalf of people forced by war from their centuries-old homes it is Helena Klakočar and her contemporary style, expressed in a warm and humane manner through the new and growing avant-garde medium of diary-like graphic novel.

Her well-balanced style and texts that go beyond doctrines and politicking are positioned in a true area of artistic creativity, expressed in a mass, widely popular, read and watched picture book medium.

Text author: MSc Branka Hlevnjak, Art Historian

The project “BŠ – 72 Andrija Mohorovičić“, within which the graphic novel MEDITERRANEAN WALL was created, was funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia.

BRANKA HLEVNJAK – preface

Helena Klakočar – artist statement

About author

Suported by:

   

GALLERIES OPENING HOURS
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays

Dom HDLU
Trg žrtava fašizma 16
10000 Zagreb

JELENA KOVAČEVIĆ
POLYNOMIAL

Public presentation of the artwork – doctoral thesis at the postgraduate university study in Painting, Academy of Fine Arts, University of Zagreb 

Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU
September 12 – September 23, 2018

Opening of the exhibition: Wednesday, September 12 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU

Exhibition Polynomial, by Jelena Kovačević will be opened on Wednesday, September 12 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU (Trg žrtava fašizma 16, Zagreb).

 

ARTIST STATEMENT

The exhibition Polynomial was created as part of postgraduate study in painting at the Zagreb Academy of Fine Arts, under the mentorship of Prof. Ante Rašić and Prof. Vera Turković. Polynomial is thus a part of a future doctoral thesis, divided according to the periods in which it was created. Chronologically, the development of the idea was shown in the following way:

1: Ten drawings (2016) 

I use drawings to explore and portray the states characterized by the presence of several contradictory emotions. Characters in interiors and exteriors reflect the internal turmoil.

2: Selection of photographs to be shown in large format (2017)

In this part I exhibited all the photographs I had used while preparing the exhibition. I put myself in the role of a detective and recorder of family events using photographs, without helpers and witnesses, and I created new documentation that will one day be seen as an isolated moment in the past.

3: Sketches and a visual diary (2017)

In the Polynomial drawing, the backbone of the entire exhibition, I create a juxtaposition of the four selected characters and deliberate upon the positions that belong to them within the frame. After defining the format I started working on two smaller format sketches in which the initial idea underwent certain changes. I simultaneously kept a visual diary to relieve from responsibility imposed on a work of art at an exhibition.

4: Polynomial drawing (2017) and analysis of the drawing (2018)

 Five characters are the protagonists of the story: four females and one animal in the background. The invisible action takes place in a non-existent space. Through an atelier exhibition and by providing an insight into my notes, I am saying goodbye to my years-long work.

Jelena Kovačević

About the artist

 

Organizer:

Supported by:

WORKING HOURS:
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays (August 15).

The exhibition will remain open until September 23, 2018

 

 

TRACES OF WATER
September 7 – October 14, 2018.
Prsten Gallery

 

TRACES OF WATER group international exhibition opens at the Prsten Gallery, Home of the Croatian Association of Artists on Friday, September 7 2018, at 20:00 h.
Curator of the exhibition is Silvia Maria Grossman.

Artists: Wolfgang Bleier, Alfred Graf, Martina Grlić, Silvia Maria Grossmann, Barbara Höller, Igor Juran, Luise Kloos, Damir Žižić/Kristian Kožul, Martina Mezak, Petra Mrša, Davor Sanvincenti, Wilhelm Scheruebl, Kurt Straznicky, Marta Stamenov, Reinhard Süss, Stjepan Šandrk, Goran Škofić, Stipan Tadić, Gerlinde Thuma, Josip Zanki, Fridolin Welte

”The big ship engines have started up, the ferry moves slowly away from the pier in Valbiska on the island of Krk. Pulling a wide trail through the water, the ship is on its way to the island of Cres.

Over the next few days, the participants of the 2017 symposium “Traces of Water,” including a composer and an author, will be crossing over to Sveti Jakov on the island of Lošinj. It is the second symposium bringing together artists from Croatia and Austria, a continuation of the cooperation that began with a symposium and show at the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 2014.
The theme of water accompanies us throughout the symposium and in our preparations for the planned shows in Zagreb and Vienna  ̶  water as oceans and seas, as rivers, as weather, as borders, as a link, the water that permeates everything and is a major part of our bodies.  
During the day we explore on our own and in the evening we meet to cook, every day a different group of two or three making some home-style dishes. After dinner, a few artists present their work, projecting images onto the wall of the house. Following their presentations, we talk about art, our interests and our own artistic aims. We notice that these discussions are no longer about Croatia and Austria, where we come from, but are about us, people who want to create art on a particular subject in a carefully chosen place  ̶  on an island.
The ideas and conceptions for the show have now been realized. It will open at the Meštrović Pavilion in Zagreb, the home of the Croatian Association of Visual Artists (HDLU). Later it will be shown in Vienna.
The artistic explorations of the symposium have resulted in artwork whose range is broad and inspiring.”Silvia Maria Grossmann

 

Maria Christine Holter – Traces of Water ‒ Traces of Time

Josip Zanki – Trails and Water

 

 

 

Suported by:

 

 

GALLERIES OPENING HOURS
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays

Dom HDLU
Trg žrtava fašizma 16
10000 Zagreb

Glorija Lizde
F 20.5
PM Gallery
September 4 – 9, 2018

When presenting the history of a family, the photographic medium is very often, because of its skilful flirting with documentarism, perceived as a testimony of time. At the same time, the element of a positive self-presentation on depictions of moments of staged family idyll is being (inadvertently) disregarded.

This is precisely the starting point for artist Glorija Lizde’s reflections. She asks herself
whether it is possible to retrospectively examine difficult, repressed and unrecorded fragments of time related to a certain family. However, before plunging into past moments, the author carries out extensive research on her father’s illness, which marked the growing up of his three daughters. The illness is referred to as F20.5, a cold medical code for residual schizophrenia.

After that, she places the same three female protagonists into staged reinterpretations of father’s hallucinations, which, by taking on performative character, have a therapeutic effect on places of repressed family memories. In so doing, the artist uses the capacity of photography for resemantization of thinned memories, and she divides the final series into three segments: unified portraits of the three sisters and performances of father’s
hallucinations which intertwine with depictions of still life. Thus she expands the story about father’s inner antagonisms through other family members who are determined by them, at the same time synthesizing multiple views of “one reality”.
We recognize duality, as a guiding principle in the art process, in the dichotomy between dynamic and calming, achieved by interaction between light and shadow; by emphasizing clear, sharp colours with inscribed symbolism (such as red which is associated with life-death, love-war dualities); repeating geometrized motifs; while on the other hand calming landscapes hint at the final state of mental order, closing the circle.

Duality is also present on the conceptual level because the artist uses photography as a tool for introspection but at the same time, she skilfully plays with it in representation, by
manipulating framing, omitting content, alternating subjects and clear context, which results in the loss of connection between hallucination and interpretation. This creates a fertile ground for inscribing different meanings. Therefore, she translates the feeling of apparent closeness and almost voyeuristic prying into the intimacy of a family, exposed on gallery walls, into the structures of some other, more universal reality, which requires facing the past for a better present.

Artist Statement

About author

Suported by:

TIHOMIR MATIJEVIĆ
PLATO WATCHES THE SIMPSONS
Karas Gallery
September 4 – September 16, 2018

Opening of the exhibition: Tuesday, September 4 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery

Exhibition Plato Watches the Simpsons, by Tihomir Matijević will be opened on Tuesday, September 4 at 7pm at the Karas Gallery (Zvonimirova 58).

“(…) Mourning for the lost “spiritual model“ is also increasingly visible in visual arts, and thus the Osijek-based sculptor Tihomir Matijević, in his work indicatively titled “Plato Watches the Simpsons“, reached for the global model of cartoon-behaviourism in which the memory of the days of belonging to someone and something still seems alive. It is an installation consisting of a white polyester sculpture (family portrait od The Simpsons), wooden construction as a simulation of a family home and scattered (edible) popcorn on the floor of specified space (the popcorn itself could be a great representation of ravenous gulping of cognitive snacks that do not fill the human void, or in Wittgenstein’s words – they represent the impossibility to technically solve fundamental life problems).

(…) Behind the mask of pseudo portraying, the strong indication of Memento Mori construction could not remain hidden. Since the animations as models simply do not have their own internalities or personal secrets, they could not be turned into portraits. (True portraits require a reciprocal “transfer of internalities“ between persons open in their freedom)[1]. However, the (non-)mastering of subconscious or unconscious projections of one’s own internality into inanimate things (animated Simpsons) could surely achieve what we call the artist’s self-portrait, so if Plato is truly “watching“ someone in the describes installation, it is the artist Tihomir Matijević.”

From preface, written by Zlatko Kozina

[1] Schillebeeckx, Edward. H. Krist, sakremenat susreta s Bogom [Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God]. Zagreb. Kršćanska sadašnjost, 1992, p.5.

 

Preface

About the artist

 

Supported by:

The Karas Gallery program is also realized with the financial support of the Croatian Association of Fine Artists (HDLU).

Working hours:

Wednesday and Friday: 9am to 3pm | Thursday: 3pm to 7pm | Saturday and Sunday: 9am to 12am
Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays: closed.

The exhibition will remain open until September 16, 2018

MARTINA MEZAK
METROPOLIS
Bačva Gallery, Home of HDLU
August 2 – August 26, 2018

Opening of the exhibition: Thursday, August 2 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU

Exhibition Metropolis, by Martina Mezak will be opened on Thursday, August 2 at 8pm at the Home of HDLU (Trg žrtava fašizma 16).

“(…) In the 20th century psychology the focus is on the division of personality and its functioning on a conscious and subconscious level, as well as on the intertwining of these two levels that impact the current manifestation of personality. Through the prism of Freud’s and Jung’s theory of personality this work explores and shows the complexity of being in its existence, in its relation to itself and its surroundings.

The installation was named after Fritz Lang’s cult expressionist film Metropolis from 1923, in which the mediator (Superego-unconscious-ideals) discovers that the city (Ego-conscious), functions and exists thanks to the invisible oppressed workers in the underground (Id-unconscious-instincts).”

Martina Mezak

Filmed & Edited: Martina Mezak
Sound: Bojan Gagić
Media and technical support: Božidar Katić, Silvestar Vnučec

Preface

About the artist

Organizer:

Supported by:

 

WORKING HOURS:
Wednesday to Friday: 11.00 AM – 7.00 PM
Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 AM – 18.00 PM
Closed on Mondays, Tuesdays and holidays (August 15).

The exhibition will remain open until August 26, 2018

HDLU